Mankind has a requirement to eat food for its growth and survival. In ancient days, man used to pick up the fruits and vegetables directly from plants or used to hunt for animals and eat them. With the discovery of fire, ancient cooking started in which man used to roast his food before eating. Today cooking of food has become a necessity for mankind.
Cooking or cookery is the art or practice of preparing food for consumption with the use of heat. Cooking techniques and ingredients vary widely across, the world, reflecting unique environmental, economic, and cultural traditions. Preparing food with heat or fire is an activity unique to humans. There are many methods of cooking, most of which have been known since antiquity. These include baking, roasting, frying, grilling, barbecuing, smoking, boiling, steaming, and braising. A more recent innovation is microwaving. The said methods are generally used by majority of people for cooking food. The cooking devices available today are compatible to these methods of cooking. These devices provide cooking method and consume cooking, materials compatible to each other which result in faster cooking rather faster meal preparation. But they do not cook meats using fresh ingredients which are typical to home cooked food which is both healthy and hygienic. These devices mainly shorten the period and complexity of cooking which mainly involves the usage of frozen or stored food which isn't quite healthy.
Although cooking is essential, it can't be done by all as it requires basic knowledge as well as skill of cooking. One should know the art of cooking to cook food. Moreover, in today's world many people face various obstacles in cooking food like time, dedication, knowledge, mastery etc. So they depend on others to cook their food, outsource their requirement or go to restaurants or hotels for eating. But in such cases one has to compromise on the quality, taste, quantity, health & hygiene, availability, cost etc. So with the help of technology, man has developed machines for cooking food based on his needs and requirements.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,450,757 describes an automatic machine for cooking food such as soup-paste, rice or pot herbs, in which a support structure with a base and an upper working plane is provided with an open cooking tank contained within the support structure above the base and below the working plane, a water entry duct and an exit overflow duct is provided, water is supplied to the tank at a predetermined temperature, and a water circulation is associated with the tank and housed within the support structure for circulating cooking water at a predetermined temperature through the tank for intermixing with the water supplied by the water supply to the tank, and the temperature of the water in the tank is maintained at a predetermined temperature while the level of the cooking water is maintained at a predetermined level and the water is forced to exit through the overflow duct for the removal from the cooking water in the tank of particles suspended in the water such as starch and scums through the overflow duct.U.S. Pat. No. 4,548,130 discusses an automatic food cooking, machine comprising, a frame supporting, a housing having an unobstructed opening with an adjustable heating surface at the bottom thereof. Mounted in the opening of the housing are a pair of spaced parallel endless conveyor chains supported on sprockets connected to a pair of spaced shafts—one driven by a motor, and one used for adjustment of conveyor chain tension. Mounted between these shafts are idler sprockets used to support the conveyor chain. A plurality of spaced angles are connected to the conveyor chains, and a retainer fastened to the spaced angle is used to secure each food basket comprised of a bottom, four sides, and a hinged lid. A sauce dispenser is supported by a bracket fastened to a slide rail at the top of the housing. As the actuating tab fastened to a retainer moves slowly toward the sauce dispenser and makes contact, it automatically rotates said dispenser 90 degree allowing sauce to drip directly on the food product. As the actuating tab travels, past the sauce dispenser, said dispenser automatically returns to an upright or “off” position. A heating surface located at the bottom of the housing is supported by four cables passing through guides to a central guide where they are swedged to a main cable that is fastened to a hand crank.U.S. Pat. No. 5,833,295 discloses a lightweight mobile kitchen which has the capability to be transported to a remote food service site by a small prime mover and quickly, be placed in operation by a minimal crew. The kitchen is self contained on a wheeled chassis and is moved as a closed wagon, then the sides and end are opened for cooking. Accessory flexible enclosure material is connected to the wagon sides to provide an enclosure for protection from the elements during service and consumption of food. The efficiency of the cooking operation results, from the layout of the various utilities to maximize the individual resources of the cooks. The kitchen has compartmentalized areas for sanitation, food preparation, grilling, convection baking, ovens, and warming. The kitchen is self contained and includes its own fuel, filtration system, potable water, fuel, electric lights, an automatic gas shutoff and a fire suppression system.U.S. Pat. No. 6,598,514 discloses a kiosk (10) that enables pasta portions of the type forming the classical Italian first course to be prepared, the kiosk (10) including an automatic pasta cooking machine (18); a cooking hob (20) for amalgamating within a suitable container, by heating accompanied by mixing, the required sauces or condiments with the pasta previously cooked in the pasta cooking machine; and a heating element (22) for heating the sauces or condiments and/or for maintaining them hot.US Patent Application 20040172380 provides an automatic cooking method and system, wherein the cooking process of a chef is recorded. Then, a program about the cooking process is obtained with information about amounts and kinds of main ingredients and seasoning materials used by the chef, timing of adding main ingredients and seasoning materials and movement tracks of the cooking container and shovel. Thereafter, manipulators of a mechanical operating system of the present invention imitate chefs cooking process according, to commend signal from the program to produce a dish. The present invention uses recording devices to record chefs cooking process and provide a program, then respective mechanical operating system accomplishes, cooking, tasks imitating the chef, which provides restaurants and households with dishes by the chef when using the program and mechanical operating system. The present invention not only made exceptional dishes widely available, it can also serve a large number of patrons at the same time.US Patent Application 20130122166 gives an automated multi layered Poratta production process which is fully hygienic and automatic production system. In Asian countries multi layered Parotta/flat bread production is done by hand and its hard labour-ship. In this above mentioned process very thin 0.5 mm wheat flour dough is done by sheeter machine. This thin sheet is rolled and kept in freezer below 48 degree centigrade. After this rolled dough got rigid, its sliced and cooked by hot plate press cooking. This will deliver multi layered Parotta after cooking. This product is cooled below 20 degree centigrade with the help of the cooling system. After cooling the product is immediately packed.WO 2010052301 gives a machine for automatically cooking foodstuffs in general, comprising a boiler, a compensation chamber and cooking means for multiple and differentiated doses of said foodstuffs, these means consisting of at least two cooking chambers, equipped with respective dosing units for the same foodstuffs. Each dosing unit is also provided with an upper conduit, adapted to selectively receive the food from a distributor hopper, arranged rotating above the same dosing units. Compared to known machines in this field, the machine according to the invention offers the advantage of enabling, to cook several doses of food, thereby overcoming the traditional need to have the same number of machines as there are doses to be cooked. Moreover the machine according to the invention offers the important advantage of being able to cook, simultaneously, several doses of reciprocally different foodstuffs (e.g. spaghetti, macaroni and other types of pasta.)EP 1532902 discloses an automatic cooking, machine, especially one that can property control the duration and degree of cooking of cooked materials and can automatically perform various main cooking, techniques. The automatic cooking machine comprising a pan, a sensor system, an auto feeding system, an auto adjusting system for heating intensity by gas/electrical heating, an auto turnover system for the cooked materials, an auto taking-out system for the cooked materials and a computer control system. In the present invention, under the control of the computer control system, the sensor system directly detects the duration and degree of cooking of the cooked materials, the auto adjusting system for heating intensity automatically regulates heating power in a continuous manner or a multistage manner, the auto feeding system automatically feeds the cooking-material at the proper duration and degree of cooking, and the auto turnover/taking-out system for the cooked materials turns over and takes out the cooked materials at the proper moment under the requirements of cooking techniques. Therefore, the automatic cooking machine can perform various main cooking techniques, especially those for preparing Chinese dishes.KR 20060121492 relates to a device for automatically cooking food to automatically process the cooking preparation steps in order after preparing for pans and supplying the water by mounting the pan supply units and the pan transfer units. A device for automatically cooking food having, pan supply units (20), where the loaded pans are discharged one by one by a separation cam (25) rotated by a motor (21), and pan transfer units for automatically transferring the pan to burners (14) is composed of: a body (10) having, plural rails (13) so as to place plural burners separated with a regular interval and to place the pans on the burners; the plural pan supply units corresponding, to the burners; the plural pan transfer units corresponding to the burners; and a control box (40) having an auto/manual switch (41) simultaneously operating or selectively/manually operating, the plural burners, pan supply units, and pan transfer units. A hot water tank (50) is mounted at the body to supply the hot water or gravy to the pans.CN 1337203 relates to a full-automatic cooking machine, including cover plate, motor for placing material, material-placing, plate, stir-frying, pan, turning shovel and hopper. Said components are coaxially mounted in the cooking machine in turn from upper to lower. Between cover plate and material-placing plate several partition boards are set, and between the several partition boards and motor sleeve and machine shell a dish-holding basket is formed. The material-placing plate is a circular disk with notch, and can be driven by motor and rotated, and the turning shovel is mounted in the stir-frying pan positioned in the middle of machine shell, both are coaxially mounted, and fixed on the machine shell by means of left and right rotating shaft, its hopper is placed under the stir-frying pan, and a dish plate is placed under the hopper. The invention can implement whole cooking process, and can cook one or several dishes.CN 1843272 discloses an automatic cooking device and the using method. The device comprises: heating device (1), pan (2), stirring device (3), addition device for solid condiment (4), addition device for liquid condiment (5), addition device for main condiment and findings (6), and controlling device (7) controlling devices mentioned above. The cooking procedure is imported into microcomputer in controlling device, the pan is detachably, installed in heating device, stirring device is foldably installed in the top of pan; and the addition devices for solid condiment, for liquid condiment and for main condiment and findings are controlled by controlling, device through electromagnet, electromagnet valve or electromagnet pump. The invention is characterized by simple structure and small size.CN 102144745 relates to a cooking method which is completed in an automatic or semi-automatic cooking apparatus and can realize various cooking processes and a cooking auxiliary device, wherein the cooking method comprises the following, steps: firstly placing or putting materials for cooking in a certain cooking container or a heating position; secondly providing information of cooking, type and position information of the materials for cooking, and then calling a corresponding, cooking program according to the information of the cooking type; further judging the cooking container or the heating position in which the materials for cooking are located according to the position information; and finally running the called cooking program for performing cooking control on the materials for cooking or emitting, a cooking operation prompt when necessary according to the cooking process. By adopting the cooking method and the device, the same computer program or the different computer programs can be used for simultaneously automatically controlling or prompting the cooking process of two or more dishes for an operator, the cooking process of two or more dishes with different cooking types/cooking requirements and the cooking process of two or more dishes with different start/end times of cooking.Indian Patent 234587 describes a two, in one cooking vessel with filter and valve which is a closed type of vessel (Nos. 8, 3 and 1 in the Drawing) with the safety features (Nos. 2 and 4 in the Drawing), easy flow type filter valve for residual materials (Nos. 9 and 10 in the Drawing), fixed partition plate within the main vessel (NO. 7), filtering plate with stand (No. 11), provision of safety holes with safety pressure lids on the upper vessel cover (Nos. 2 and 4) and with the necessary vessel handles including upper vessel handle (Nos. 1 and 6). In this vessel there is no necessity to tilt the vessel to filter the excess water in the rice cooking compartment. Further simultaneous preparation of more than one food items (Rice and Sambar etc.) is possible. Automatic lifting of the lids (No. 2) is provided, while the steam inside the vessel is excessive through the pressure holes (No. 4).Indian Patent Application 1533/CHE/2008 provides an automated system of preparing dishes designed with the preparation of South Indian food In mind, the system can be adapted to whatever type of food is desired by the user. The system comprises of a single machine with all the ingredients stored In their respective docks. An Induction heating pan heats a cooking vessel to a desired temperature. The cooking pan includes a temperature sensing element to monitor heating of the pan and cooking of the food. The machine when needed does chopping vegetables and seasoning automatically. At last the pan ejects out with the dish cooked and Is ready to be eaten.
Although a number of automatic cooking machines are available in the prior art, they are mostly limited to or targeted at cooking specific types of dishes and most of them are semi-automatic i.e. in such machines, most of the work needs to be done manually. Such machines require the user's presence while cooking food. Those inventions in which manual presence is not essential, the machine cooks limited recipes and their working area is limited. Moreover, most of these machines aren't user-friendly in using, operating and cooking; and are bulky and so haven't got much market exposure. So a portable, fully automatic cooking machine, compatible to all cuisine and food preparation methods, having assistive attachments, compatible vessels and modules adding capabilities, is user-friendly and is controlled using latest technologies is the need of the day.